One of the fastest growing areas of business is the use of on-hold messaging systems to provide general business and marketing information and the like. The simplest on hold system plays background music while the end user is on hold. More recently, companies have begun to combine music with voiceovers. The inclusion of voiceovers permits businesses to incorporate news about the business and new products or services. Today, on hold systems provide valuable information to potential and existing customers.
There are a number of patents and patent applications directed to these systems. U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2003/0043979A discloses a system for providing a single on-hold audio message to a plurality of business telephone systems at separated geographic locations converts the audio message into digital form, compresses the resulting digital file, and transmits the file via the Internet as an attachment to an e-mail message to general purpose computers located in association with each of the business telephone systems. Each of the general purpose computers receiving the message writes it onto a floppy disc which is provided to an associated playback unit. The playback units read the compressed digital files representing the on-hold message, provide the re-circulating flash memories, provide the output of the flash memories to de-compressors and the output of the de-compressors to digital-to-analog converters. The resulting audio signals are applied to the on-hold inputs of each of the business telephone systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,461 discloses an on-hold messaging system is provided for use with a business telephone system having an on-hold audio input. The system includes an optical disc having one or more messages recorded thereon, an optical disc player having an audio output, and a connection or interface between the audio output of the optical disc player and the on-hold input of the business telephone system. The optical disc player is enabled to continuously play the message or messages through the business telephone system, so that at least a portion of a message can be heard by an outside party when a telephone call between the outside party and a user of the business telephone system has been completed and the outside party is placed on hold by a user of the business telephone system. Optionally, an audio amplifier may be used as an interface between the optical disc player and the on-hold input of the business telephone system, so that the sound quality of the message as heard by the outside party is satisfactory.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,625,464 discloses a point to multipoint messaging system includes utilizing the FM 57 kHz Radio Broadcast Data System (RBDS) standard and a novel receiver. A single broadcast source sends messages from multiple senders, in a variety of manners including automatically and semi-automatically, to a plurality of receivers who may select to receive or not to receive particular senders' messages. The receiver is remotely programmable by the user so that the user may select to receive at least some messages
U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,670 is directed to audio conference calls. The music on-hold-problem occurs when a conferee having music-on-hold puts the conference call on hold, resulting in a continuous stream of music being transmitted to the other conferees. Such a conferee is called an offending conferee. The solution presented herein is to prevent music-on-hold signals emanating from an offending conferee from being passed through an audio conference bridge to the other conferees. This is accomplished, in particular embodiments, by directing a merging/summing subsystem of the audio conference bridge to temporarily stop combining audio emanating from the offending conferee from being combined or merged onto audio channels through which the other conferees communicate on the audio conference. Once the music-on-hold is terminated, the offending conferee can rejoin conference call by sending a signal that directs the merging/summing subsystem to resume the combining of audio signals emanating from the offending conferee onto the audio channels of the other conferees.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,374 is a remotely programmable message delivery system comprises a number of client computers which communicate with a server to send control signals to one or more remote message playback devices. The message playback devices are each provided with a library of messages, and comprise at least one music on-hold-compatible telephone system, a public address system or other audio and/or visual advertising device. Message playlists from the client computers can be sent via the server to the message playback devices by a communication link such as a radio paging system. The client computer is programmed to generate screens for guiding an operator to select messages from the library of messages and the order and times at which they are to be played by selected message playback devices. Message playback devices can be organized into one or more regions to allow a message playlist to be sent to more than one message playback device using a single radiopaging signal.
Most of the prior art is characterized by basic systems which provide simple systems in which on-hold messages are provided by mail as tapes or physical media. The previous efforts at online systems have required that special software be resident on the customer's computer such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,374. This has made it both difficult and expensive to change and alter on-hold messages.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system whereby the on-hold messages can be easily authored, selected and downloaded.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system by which on-hold messages can be easily downloaded onto an MP3 flash card format.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an online system by which end users can easily access, upload, author and download on hold messages and by which end user customers can easily access and download on-hold messages.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description which follows.